Is it difficult to teach Japanese by yourself? Is there any good way? How to write in Japanese?

Japanese (Japanese: Hiragana にほんご, Katakana ニホンゴ, nihon go, Roman characters), referred to as Japanese, is the language mainly used by Yamato people on Japanese islands and is the official language of Japan. Japanese writing

The complicated writing system is a major feature of Japanese. Its writing system includes three writing systems: Japanese characters (mostly by pronunciation and training pronunciation), Hiragana and Katakana. At the same time, Japanese Roman characters can also be translated into Latin letters. Japanese has two sets of phonetic symbols: hiragana (hiragana) and katakana (katakana), and it can also be written in Latin letters with Roman characters. Pseudonyms and Chinese characters are often used in daily life, and Roman characters are often used in signboards or advertisements. The phonetic notation of Japanese characters uses Hiragana instead of Roman characters. In phonology, apart from "っ" and "ん", the syllable-opening language has strong characteristics, such as the beat (mora). In terms of stress, it belongs to pitch stress. From the word order, a sentence is composed of subject, object and predicate, which belongs to the subject-object predicate structure and is one of the representative topic priority languages. Morphologically, it belongs to adhesive language. In terms of vocabulary, in addition to the harmony language handed down from ancient times, there are also Chinese vocabulary introduced from China. Recently, the proportion of foreign words introduced from various countries has gradually increased. In terms of people's performance, Japanese is very diverse, including not only spoken and written language, but also ordinary and solemn, male and female, old and young, with a developed honorific system. In terms of dialects, there are great differences between East and West in Japan, which are called Kanto Dialect and Kansai Dialect respectively. In addition, for the deaf, there is Japanese sign language corresponding to Japanese grammar and phonology system. Similar to Japanese is Ryukyu. Japanese is mainly used in Japan. When Japan invaded and ruled China, Taiwan Province Province, parts of Chinese mainland, Hongkong, Korean Peninsula, Southeast Asia and Oceania, local people were forced to learn to speak Japanese and to give people Japanese names. Many Japanese immigrants who have settled in California and Brazil can also speak Japanese. Although their descendants have Japanese names, they rarely use Japanese skillfully.

Editing this language family and evolution

Japanese is a cohesive language, which forms sentences by pasting grammatical elements on words. This language is called flexible use. The combination between them is not close, only showing grammatical functions without changing the meaning of the original words. Japanese is very diverse, not only in spoken and written language, but also in simplicity, simplicity, dignity, solemnity, men, women and children. People in different industries and positions speak differently. This aspect reflects the strict hierarchy and team thinking of Japanese society. Honorific words are developed in Japanese. The use of honorifics makes Japanese in public very elegant. However, the overly complicated grammar makes it extremely difficult to learn honorifics. Even the native Japanese can't fully grasp it. The developed languages of honorifics are Korean and Mongolian. Japanese pronunciation is very simple, with only five vowels and several consonants. With all kinds of unusual sounds, the total * * * does not exceed 100. Spanish and Italian are similar in pronunciation to Japanese. Generally speaking, the proportion of consonants and vowels in the pronunciation of these three languages is close to 1: 1. Japanese vocabulary is very rich and huge, absorbing a lot of foreign words. Generally speaking, there are more than 30,000 (excluding names and places) (1956). (See Japanese # Japanese Vocabulary) is closely related to Altai language family and Austronesian language family, and is greatly influenced by Chinese, which absorbs tones and quantifiers originally characteristic of Sino-Tibetan language family, thus making the language attribution of Japanese very complicated. Linguists have different opinions about the origin of Japanese. There are many theories about the origin of Japanese. Many scholars believe that, syntactically, Japanese is close to Altaic languages such as Turkish and Mongolian. It is generally believed that Japanese is syntactically similar to Korean. There is also evidence that Japanese morphology and vocabulary were influenced by southern Malay-Polynesian languages in prehistoric times. Linguistically speaking, Japan is almost a single nation, with more than 99% of the population using the same language. This means that Japanese is the sixth largest language in the world. However, Japanese is rarely used outside Japan. It is generally believed that the writing system in contemporary Japan includes Japanese characters, Hiragana and Katakana, which originated in China. Among them, ideographic Chinese characters were once called "real names" compared with pseudonyms. Although China people are no strangers to Chinese characters, they are still confused when they encounter Chinese characters such as "one", "one", "ying" and "bian". These Chinese characters were created by the Japanese. Perhaps many people don't know that the word "gland" used in Chinese now was also created by the Japanese in the Edo period. Of course, the pronunciation of Japanese Chinese characters is different from that of Chinese, but it can be expressed by pseudonyms. A Chinese character usually has multiple pronunciations. For example, "wood" has many pronunciations, such as "き, もく, ぼく". There are two main situations. One is that after Chinese characters were introduced into Japan, the Chinese pronunciation of Chinese characters themselves was also introduced. This pronunciation is called "phonetic reading", such as "もく, ぼく" in the above example; However, when Japanese proper words express their meanings in Chinese characters, the pronunciation becomes "training reading". For example, "き". Some Japanese pronunciations are the same as Chinese. For example, "Navy" is pronounced as "kai gun" in Japanese. Although Japanese and China speak completely different languages, the Japanese writing system comes from China. The development of China in Tang Dynasty was very prosperous. At that time, there was no writing in Japan. Therefore, the Japanese sent envoys from the Tang Dynasty to China to study language and writing. After more than 1000 years of changes, Japanese characters have changed, but some of them are very similar or close to Chinese pronunciation. There are many local dialects in Japan. Under the influence of mass media such as radio, television and movies, standard Japanese based on Tokyo dialect gradually spread to the whole country, but the dialects spoken by people in Kyoto and Osaka, in particular, continued to prosper and retained their prestige. Japanese is called Japanese in English.

Edit this paragraph to learn Japanese well.

1. Listen carefully in class and listen to the teacher's analysis bit by bit, which is easy to understand. 2. Do more questions and master grammar easily. Speak more, and you can read authentic Japanese. Listening more will help you get familiar with the environment in Japan. 5. Occasionally find some short articles to recite to enhance the sense of language. 6. Read more Japanese literature and get familiar with Japanese. 7. Ask more questions and solve problems you don't understand in time. The usefulness of learning Japanese: 1. Studying in Japan II. Absorb advanced Japanese technology for China.

3. Understand Japanese culture. 4. Show Japanese China culture with 5,000 years of civilization. 5. enrich your knowledge. 6. Exercise your memory and language skills. 7. Make yourself a disseminator of language civilization. Reduce the number of words, please refer to the Japanese learning entry for relevant content. [ 1]

Edit the language features of this paragraph.

phonology

Spanish and Italian speakers will find that Japanese short vowels -A, I, U, E, O- are similar in pronunciation to those languages. Long vowels-AA, ii, uu, ei, ee or oo-are pronounced twice as long as short vowels (although ei is often pronounced with two vowels). The difference between long vowels and short vowels is very important, because it will change the meaning of a word. Consonants include K, S, sh, T, ch, ts, N, H, F, M, Y, R, W, G, J, Z, D, B, P, fricative sh (such as "shoot" in English) and fricative ch, ts, J (such as "charge" in English, respectively) The pronunciation of G is usually like the voiced consonant in English "game", not the pronunciation of G in "gene". One of the main differences from English is that Japanese has no stress: the stress of each syllable is the same. English syllables are sometimes elongated, but in Japanese, the pronunciation of a series of syllables is as regular as a metronome. Like English, Japanese has an accent system of high and low tones.

The origin of pseudonyms in Japanese

In ancient times, the Japanese nation only had its own national language, but not its own writing. Later, China culture was introduced to Japan, and literate Japanese began to record in Chinese. After the middle of the fifth century, the Japanese created a Japanese writing method with Chinese characters as symbols between tables. After the eighth century, this method of using Chinese characters as symbols between tables was widely adopted, and the famous ancient Japanese poetry collection "Ye Wan Collection" adopted this writing method. For example, the Japanese word "mountain" is pronounced "やま", and the Chinese character "Ma Ye" is used to write in "Ye Wan Ji". "Bangbang" is pronounced "さくら", so it is written in three Chinese characters: Sanjiuliang. In Japanese, the auxiliary words "Tian, Er, Hu and Bo" are used to represent them. This writing was later called "Wanye pen name". However, it is very complicated to write notes under the pseudonym of ten thousand characters, and it will be gradually simplified in the future, only the radicals of Chinese regular script, such as "a"->; "","Yi"->; ィ and Yu->; ""wait. In addition, the soft China cursive script is suitable for writing Japanese songs, especially after cursive script is popular in writing letters, diaries and novels. It is a simple, fluent and free and easy font, such as "An"->; ぁ and Yu->; ぅ and so on. At this point, the Japanese nation finally created its own characters by using Chinese characters. Because these words are borrowed from Chinese characters, they are called "pseudonyms" According to the different writing methods of pseudonyms, pseudonyms taken from regular script of Chinese characters are called katakana (カタカナ), and pseudonyms evolved from cursive script of Chinese characters are called hiragana (ひらがな). Both katakana and hiragana are phonography based on Chinese characters. Hiragana is commonly used for writing and printing, and katakana is usually used to represent loanwords and special words. For example: これはのテキストです. This is a Japanese textbook. "これは", "の" and "です" in this sentence are hiragana. Hiragana is a very important part of Japanese, which can be directly word-formed. For example, "これ" (pronounced "ko re") means "this" (equivalent to "this" in English); の (pronounced "no") means "yes", and the previous は and the last です are used together to judge that "... means ...". Hiragana can also be used as other components in a sentence that have no specific meaning. For example, "は" is an auxiliary word that separates "これ (this)" from "Japanese". In addition, it is also the basic unit of Chinese character pronunciation in Japanese, which is somewhat similar to the function of Chinese Pinyin. Katakana "テキスト" is a katakana. Katakana and Hiragana are in one-to-one correspondence, with the same pronunciation, but different writing styles. You can understand the difference between uppercase letters and lowercase letters in English (but they are not the same thing, just for your understanding). Katakana is mainly used to form western loanwords and other special words. For example, "テキスト" (pronounced "te ki su to") means "textbook", which is transliterated from the English word "text". In addition, there is another way to express Japanese with Latin letters from Rome, which is called "Roman characters". Similar to China's "Pinyin". Roman characters mainly appear in proper nouns such as names of people, places and institutions, and are often used in Japanese computer input methods.

Chinese characters in Japanese

Chinese characters, called Chinese characters in Japanese, are actually ideographic symbols, and each symbol represents a thing or an idea. It is common for a Chinese character to have more than one sound. In Japan, Chinese characters are used to write words originated in China and Japanese words native to Japan. Japanese is a Chinese character. "Japanese" means "Japanese", but its pronunciation is not Chinese. The pronunciation of Japanese is にほんご (pronounced "Ni Hong Weiqi"). The pen name "にほんご" here is equivalent to the pinyin of the Japanese character "Japanese" (not the real pinyin, of course). There are many Chinese characters in Japanese, most of which are related to their Chinese meanings, but their pronunciations are often different. Although a relatively complete Japanese dictionary can accept 50,000 Chinese characters, the number used now is much less. 1946 The Ministry of Education defines the number of commonly used and formally used words as 1850, including 996 words taught in primary and junior high schools. In 198 1, this list is replaced by a slightly expanded list of 1945 words, although most of them are the same. Publications other than newspapers are not restricted by this list. In addition, many readers know the meaning of Chinese characters better than those taught in standard public school courses. 20 10 in April, the Chinese Characters Sub-committee of Japan Cultural Review Council summarized the final plan of the new commonly used Chinese characters list, and * * * included 2 136 characters. In addition to the existing 1945 Chinese characters, 196 characters such as "An", "Gang" and "Liang" have been added, and 5 characters such as "Ru" have been deleted. The Committee will submit a new list of commonly used Chinese characters to the Japanese Ministry of Education in June of 20 10 at the earliest, and it is expected to be published in 20 10. [2] The revision of 2065438+00 combined with the popularity of information tools such as computers and mobile phones has made complex Chinese characters easy to use. This will be the first revision of the current list of commonly used Chinese characters since 198 1 The Committee chooses words according to the high frequency of word formation and the standard that Chinese characters are easier to understand than pseudonyms. Although Chinese characters that only appear in proper nouns are not listed in principle, the words such as Gang, Xiong, Ci, Qi, Pear, Fu, Nai, Osaka, Yuan and Deer used in the names of prefectures and counties are * *. In addition, "Feng Jingen" and "Han" of North Korea will also be added to the new list. At the request of the Legislative Affairs Bureau of the Cabinet, four Chinese characters commonly used in law, such as "tick" and "bribe", were added to the final plan. Chinese characters with more strokes such as "Yu" will also be included. [2] Japanese national character

In Japanese, the word "national character" has three meanings: one is Japanese characters, including Chinese characters, pseudonyms and other characters used to record Japanese; Second, a pseudonym created by the Japanese to distinguish it from Chinese characters from China; Third, the Japanese imitate the structure of Chinese characters and make their own Chinese characters. But what the Japanese usually call "national character" refers to the third meaning. At this time, the "national character" is also called "harmony", "handsome", "harmonious folk" and "harmonious Chinese character". The question to be discussed here is the third meaning of "national character". After Chinese characters were introduced into Japan, the Japanese abandoned the sound of Chinese characters and used the form and meaning of Chinese characters to represent the inherent Japanese vocabulary, such as "やま" with "mountain" and "ぅみ" with "sea". However, because Japan is different from China in many aspects, such as natural environment, social form and living habits, there are some concepts in Japanese that are not in Chinese, so there are no corresponding Chinese characters to express these concepts in Japanese. Therefore, the Japanese make their own Chinese characters to express these concepts by imitating the structure of Chinese characters. For example, the word "榊" (pronounced "さかき") stands for a tree dedicated to God, and the word "梫" (pronounced "つじ") stands for a crossroads. Most Chinese characters for the word ""(pronounced "とぅ") are Here are some typical Chinese characters created by knowing the law. るる (すべる): The combination of "one" means smooth, which means "slippery" and "slippery" (note: this word is also slippery )つじ ();

Pronunciation, training and familiar words training

Chinese characters are widely used in Japanese. There are tens of thousands of Chinese characters in Japanese, but only a few thousand are commonly used. 1946 10 10 In October, the Japanese government published the List of Chinese Characters to be Used, which included 1850 Chinese characters. 198 1, 10 released the List of Commonly Used Chinese Characters, which contains 1946 Chinese characters. In textbooks and official documents, only the Chinese characters listed in the List of Commonly Used Chinese Characters are generally used. Generally, each Chinese character has two ways of pronunciation, one is called "phonetic reading" (phonetic reading/ぉんよみ), and the other is called "training reading/みくん), which imitates the pronunciation of Chinese characters from China. According to the different times and sources of Chinese characters, they can be roughly divided into "Tangyin", "Song Yin" and "Five Tones". But the pronunciation of these Chinese characters is different from that of the same Chinese character in modern Chinese. The vocabulary of "phonetic reading" is mostly Chinese inherent vocabulary. "Training reading" is the way to read this Chinese character according to the inherent language of Japan. The vocabulary of "training reading" is mostly the inherent vocabulary to express the inherent things in Japan. Many Chinese characters have more than two kinds of "phonetic reading" and "training reading" Some words are as follows: Pronunciation words: youth (せぃねん), technology (ぎじゅつ), love (れんぁ𞊣), jade. "カィ" is its pronunciation and "ぅィ" is its training. Pronunciation is based on the pronunciation introduced into Japan from China; Training reading is formed by fixing the original Japanese pronunciation, which corresponds to the meaning of Chinese characters, as its pronunciation. Chinese characters such as "Ten Xianju" generally use only one pronunciation, and "Beiyou Yi (さく)" generally use only one pronunciation, but such Chinese characters are rare. Chinese characters in Japanese usually have two, three or even more pronunciations. For example, pronunciation can be pronounced as "セィシ 125 19ウ", while training can be pronounced as "ぃきるかすぃけ". For example, "Meiyu" is pronounced as "つゆ", and it is impossible to distinguish what each Chinese character reads separately. We call this pronunciation "familiar word training". The following are also "familiar words": Tian, (,), sumo (written as "sumo"), local products (

Preparatory knowledge of pseudonym learning

This is the Japanese alphabet, and the picture in the black box at the top left is Isuzu. Let's analyze it below. Fifty voiceless sounds are the most basic voiceless pseudonyms, which are called "fifty tones", and many friends who originally wanted to teach themselves Japanese are blocked by it. Don't look at them too much, you will be afraid. In fact, they are regular. They are in a row of five, and one * * * is ten rows. Here is the "five-tone map". Take a few seconds to have a look. You don't need to remember anything, just remember.

ぁぁぁぅぇぉ

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

たたちつて

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Okay, okay, okay.

All right, let's get started.

Okay, okay, okay.

わわ (ぃぅ) (ぇ) を

In the pentatonic scale, horizontal rows are called "rows" and vertical rows are called "segments", and each row or column is named after the first pseudonym of the row or column in which it is located. In addition, the pseudonyms in brackets are duplicated by others. をを and ぉ are homophones, but を is only used as an auxiliary word. However, you must still have a headache looking at them now. It doesn't matter. Let's take a look at the Isuzu map composed of Roman characters in Japanese.

Sections A, I, U, E and O.

A line

Kahang Kaqiku Keke

Sahang Sasi/Sushi Sasso

Tower Line Tati/songkhla/Sutto

China southern airlines Nani nu ne no

Ha ha ha hi Hu/hehehe

Malaysia Airlines Mamim I don't.

Yes, yes (I) Fish (E) Yo.

Lahang Lari Rureluo

Wakeng tile (i) (u) (e) o

Note: The diagonal line is preceded by the Roman character corresponding to this paragraph, that is, the forced Roman character. After the slash is the pronunciation of the pen name, that is, ordinary Roman characters. Roman characters, they are one-to-one correspondence with pseudonyms, that is, a Japanese can be completely replaced by Roman characters. From this "pentatonic picture" composed of Roman characters, we can easily find that it is regular. Among them, the first line is "A, I, U, E, O", and every other line is preceded by an initial. For example, the second line adds a "K" on the basis of the first line, which is "ka, ki, ku, ke, Ko"; Add "s" in the third line, that is, "Sa, Shi, Su, Se, so". The tone of each line of five pseudonyms is three, one, one, three, one. Look, it's not difficult. Here, we can approximately regard Roman characters as the pinyin of pseudonyms. The pronunciations of Roman characters such as "A, I, U, E, O" are roughly the same as those of Chinese Pinyin, except that "E" is pronounced as "ai" here, while the pronunciation of ra line should be pronounced as "Larry lo" respectively, which is between "si" (Chinese Pinyin) and "su". It's difficult to write a pseudonym, but one. There are twenty voiced sounds in voiced Japanese, which are obtained by adding two points to the upper right corner of twenty unvoiced sounds. For example, the consonant changed from か is が. These twenty unvoiced sounds are four lines, namely か(ka), さ(sa), た(ta) and は(ha). There are only five semi-voiced and semi-voiced sounds-* *, which evolved from the vowel of "は(ha) line". The writing method is to write a small circle in the upper right corner of vowels, for example, the semi-voiced sound of は is ぱ. There is only one * * in the tone, which is ん, pronounced nasal and has its own syllables (pronounced like the Chinese modal particle "hmm"). Nasal voiced sound is a special pronunciation with five * * *. That is to say, most of the time, when the five voiced sounds of line か(ka) appear in words or at the end of words, their pronunciations are from ga gi gu ge go to nga ngi ngu nge NGO(“ng the pronunciations of "Ng" are the same as those of "I" in most southern dialects). For example, when nasal voiced sounds are used, the pronunciation of "ごご" (afternoon) will change from go go to go go. But some words can't be voiced nasally, so I don't know. (どぅもぁりがとぅござぃました, abbreviated as ぁりが) Although NHK's regular announcers, Japanese emperors and members of the royal family are still reading, ordinary Japanese nationals have stopped reading. But in order to speak standard Japanese, I still have to watch it. Well, like the local accent in Chinese, it is also found in Japanese. In China, some people regard learning many local accents as fashion, but the real standard is Mandarin. Japanese also has a standard nasal or voiced sound, just like Mandarin in China. People in Japan can understand without nasal voiced or voiced sounds, just as some people in your hometown can understand your hometown dialect. There are differences between short sounds and long sounds in Japanese syllables. Long notes are about twice as long as short notes, accounting for two beats. The seventy-one pseudonyms that appeared in front of them, except the tone, all represented a short sound. These short sounds have corresponding long sounds except pseudonyms used as auxiliary words. Long words and short words have different meanings, because long words and short words must be strictly distinguished. The rules for marking long sounds are as follows: ぁぁぁぅぅぇぇぇぇぇぇぇぇぇぇぇぇぇぇぇぇぇぇ. After a beat, the air generate came out. This pronunciation is called "promoting sound". Generally speaking, the improvement of voice occurs in front of the pseudonyms of line か, line さ, line た and line わ. People who are beginners of Japanese often can't pronounce well. Pay attention to the length of a beat when pronouncing. Pronunciation improvement is indicated by "っ" or "ッ", written slightly lower, each occupying a space (to the right when writing vertically). Phonetic change 1. In the same Chinese character, a pen name "ぁぁ" is followed by "ぁ", and the pronunciation of two sounds becomes "Ai" in Chinese, such as: she (かぃしゃ); 2. As long as the pseudonyms of か, た and ぱ do not appear at the beginning of the word, they are generally not aspirated (similar to voiced sound). For example: machine (つくぇ) きゃキャきゅキュきょキョ𞌒𞌒𞌒. In a compound word, if the post-morpheme starts with one of unvoiced /k /k/, /s/, /t/, /h/t/ and /h/, it changes according to the following rules respectively. The first three are pure voiced sounds. As for the fourth one, there is a P-> in Japanese history. The change of H (lip sound degradation) can be said to be irregular. k-& gt； g s-& gt； z t-& gt； d h-& gt； B-linked voiced sound is one of the assimilation phenomena that "the sound sandwiched in vowels will become voiced". In addition, the /g/ sound will become nasal in many parts of eastern Japan, and it will also be accompanied by nasal before the /d/ sound in the northeast dialect. According to Japanese "Da Wen Dian" and other materials, nasal pronunciation was more widely used in ancient times. Because of this, some people think that the voiced sound is the residual form of "の" placed between words, some people think that the voiced sound is inserted with nasal sounds (consonant insertion), and others think that it is related to the usage of nasal sounds between words in Austronesian languages such as Filipino, but I don't know which statement is accurate. Anti-turbidity conditions are not inevitable, but will be prevented by various conditions. But there are exceptions to every condition. Even if there is no stop condition, there are many words that are occasionally not confused. Therefore, at least in modern languages, whether turbidity occurs is completely unpredictable. The following are some main conditions to prevent turbidity. 1. Language confusion is limited to Japanese (Japanese inherent words) in principle, and there is no confusion between Chinese (Chinese phonetic words) and foreign words. But in Chinese, some generalized and everyday words will be confused. かぶしき +かぃしゃ→かぶしきがぃしゃ (Limited by Share Ltd.) 2. Lyman's Law If the morpheme behind the compound word already contains voiced sound, even voiced sound will be stopped. This is called Lyman(ライマン rule. はる +かぜ→はるかぜぉぉぉとかげ→ぉとおか. This kind of trace can be seen in examples such as "ながしま (Long Island)" and "なかじま (Middle Island)". 3. The right branch is limited to compound words composed of more than three morphemes. If a morpheme is first combined with the morpheme on the right, then the morpheme will not be confused. "ぉじろわし" (white-tailed vulture): {ぉしろわし} Because it is "white-tailed, sea eagle" (tail が𞗗 ") Semantic restriction If the front morpheme does not modify the back morpheme, but two morphemes are semantically juxtaposed, then there will be no turbidity. くさき (vegetation), としつき (year and month) Others in surnames include two pronunciations: even voiced and not even voiced. It is generally believed that there are many cases of continuous turbidity in eastern Japan ("Yamazaki" is pronounced as "やまざき" in eastern Japan and "やまさき" in western Japan). Compared with unvoiced words, voiced words have a strong tendency to become monotonous.

abstract

Voiced voice, voiced voice, semi-voiced voice and voiced voice are all pseudonyms, which together with Chinese characters constitute Japanese. The pronunciation of Chinese characters is also composed of the pronunciation of pseudonyms. For example, in Japanese, the Chinese character "love" is pronounced "ぁぃ", which means "I" in Roman characters. When read together, it is the sound of the Chinese character "love". Of course, this is a coincidence. Most Chinese characters in China and Japan have different pronunciations. ) If the pen name "ぁぃ" is written in Japanese instead of the Chinese character "love", others will know that this is the word "love". It can be seen that pseudonyms can not only constitute Japanese components, but also express sounds and meanings for Chinese characters in Japanese.